Taro Factory: Chewy Delights From the Taiwan Coast

An hour outside of Taipei proper, a fishing-village-turned-gold-mining-town-turned-tourist-site called Jiufen beckons visitors with its charming lanterns, steep walkways and maze of food stalls. If you can tear yourself away from the fishball soups and peanut assortments, you might find yourself climbing to the top of a hill, where a fabled taro rice ball vendor serves the icy, chewy treats overlooking a sea of scattered lights and a faint shoreline.

Here in Beijing, the best way to recreate that experience (minus the view of the East China Sea) is to go to Xianyu Xian, the Taiwanese dessert chain that serves up the taro rice balls along with other treats like red bean ice and tapioca milk tea. The sweets purveyors just pulled into Beijing about half a year ago, so you haven’t missed out on too much taro rice balling just yet.

Extreme taro enthusiasts be warned: The little guys don’t taste a whole lot like the purply root. In fact, the lighter balls are taro-based, and the orangey balls are sweet potato-based. Both taste much like your typical unfilled tangyuan, made with glutinous rice flour and water, with just a touch of extra softness and give. At Xianyu Xian, you have the option of getting them hot, drowning in a semi-sweet red bean soup – but you’ll find the iced variety retains more chew (or “Q-ness,” as some might say).

Whether you like them hot or cold, you can adorn your taro rice balls with various combinations of red bean, green bean, boiled peanuts, lotus seeds, herbal grass jelly, tapioca pearls, and chunks of real taro or sweet potato. The iced versions are a tad sweeter than the hot ones, but in general – as would be expected – the desserts are not for the sweet of tooth.

While Xianyu Xian’s Beijing locations can’t quite compete with the atmosphere of Jiufen, you have a couple of options for reconciling that. Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s landmark film A City of Sadness was set there, and Hayao Miyazaki modeled the town in Spirited Away after Jiufen’s downtown area. So why not pick up an order or two of the glutinous globules, slip in either of those DVDs and fake a quick island getaway?

Xianyu Xian Daily 10am-9pm. Units 1-8, Bldg 1, Huaqing Jiayuan, 35 Chengfu Lu, Haidian District (8286 3032) 鲜芋仙, 海淀区成府路35号华清嘉园1 号楼1-8号

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Photo: Marilyn Mai